“The glass ceiling that so many Democrats thought Hillary Clinton would shatter as the first woman president came crashing down on them Tuesday night in what can only be
described as a devastating and unexpected defeat for progressive hopes, values and agendas.”

This clearly shows just how clueless are the Democratic liberal elites. The Trump vote was largely a rejection of the establishment of both the Democratic and Republican parties. It was certainly not “a devastating and unexpected defeat for progressive hopes, values and agendas,”’ because, contrary to what the author and his cohorts at
Alternet believe, that was not what was being offered by the Clinton machine, and the voters knew that. Hillary and the establishment neoliberal corporatists Dems were only offering more of the same.

Voters weren’t fooled by her sudden rejection of the “free trade” deals that have devastated so many of the lives of working families and their communities. They weren’t buying that the Hillary Clinton who was taking more money from Wall Street banks for giving a single speech than they could make working their asses off for years of hard labor was on their side. She had the damn nerve to characterize them all as ignorant, racist and misogynistic “deplorables” without bothering to find out who their really were, because she simply didn’t care. They were never her kind of people.

There has been a lot written about how Trump has destroyed the Republican Party. If Democrats don’t wise up and take a good look at themselves, instead of blaming the
ignorance of the voters, they are also done as a electable party. They need to take a look at what Bernie did right and follow that example.

No. What you call "Liberals" are simply Republicans with a (D) after their name. The actual Liberals in America voted for Bernie Sanders and stood behind his platform well after Clinton assumed control.

Don't lump us in with the Democrats. Don't call us Clinton supporters. We stood by, screaming and shouting at you yelling "My God, what have you done?!" while she raped the country, robbed an election and decimated her own voter base.

The only ones to blame for Trump's victory are the Democrats themselves... and the media that sold itself out to them.

Yes. HRC's monumental ego and ambition---every bit as pathological as Trump's---wouldn't allow her to step aside in favor of the more far more appealing candidate, Sanders. Her blatant theft of the D primary and her equally obvious contempt for her base doomed her chances, but in a few weeks we'll be hearing that somehow it was all Jill Stein's fault. So now it's back to business as usual at Brand D headquarters.

Latest word has it that the DNC is blaming the election on Comey, FBI director. The Dems refuse to put the blame on themselves and have learned nothing from the past three lost elections.

"In its place stands Trump and the modern Republican Party, who represent
the most abhorrent forms of leadership and have an incredibly
destructive political agenda."

Yes. But don't be so disconent:

Had Hillary won, in Trump's place would have stood the old establishment of the Democratic Party, who represent the most abhorrent forms of leadership and have an incredibly destructive political agenda.

Trump soon because the corrupt neoliberal unDemocratic Party machine message was just more establishment bull. The party establishment lost the election more than Trump won it.

rosenfeld displays an utter stupidity, a stunning crudeness, a pitiful analysis suited to a 12 year old....he simply offers the ignorant slogans of the poorly educated liberal. But then one should not expect much insight from americans---as Tocqueville remarked, "americans really are different than everyone else"

Oh look, another "Americans are stupid" post from this guy! That broken record thing works for you every time.

You cannot tolerate mirrors---have a donut!

See? You have perfected the arts of repetition and monotony. But please, reply to my post with another highbrow zinger .I'm sure you cannot resist the temptation.

Keep it simple for simpletons: perhaps this Kurt Vonnegut quote better suits you. "What makes you think we have a civilization? There is nothing precious here. american civilization is garbage."

The U.S. ruling class, that utilizes both of the duopoly "major" parties in their long standing regime, was deeply split over this "election"; significant factions supported
each candidate, with Clinton in fact actually favored by the larger faction. The pundits will bloviate for the next few days about "secret" Trump voters (supposedly embarrassed to admit they were going to vote for him), how the polls were inaccurate, how turn-out by Democratic constituencies was lower than expected, how larger numbers of Whites of different economic groups voted for Trump than projected, and so on and so on.

Never for a moment will the real issues be discussed, to start with the mechanics of the electoral process. The wealthy are a tiny group and in a nominal democracy, like the U.S., they need to manipulate the "electorate" in a variety of ways. The biggest single imperative for the ruling class, to successfully maintain an acceptable patina of legitimacy as they run this society for their personal benefit, is to make sure that they limit the proportion of those who vote to as small a size as possible. The duopoly parties serve this purpose in various ways, most importantly by providing a far right-wing party, the Republicans, who espouse the most retrograde socioeconomic positions conceivable, and a center-right party, the Democrats who, at best, tepidly protect the meager living standards of the increasingly poor majority, while actively promoting issues important to their rich supporters; this duopoly system ensures that no inspiring figures with progressive views are ever nominated for the Presidency by one of the two "major parties". Massive levels of voter suppression are applied to the poor and working people of all races and ethnic groups, though aimed somewhat more intensively at African-Americans and Hispanics, to keep them from participating. The changing demographics of the U.S. have made this type of control more urgent and obvious as about 30 state legislatures have passed all kinds of new measures to limit popular participation in elections. Six million felons are prohibited from voting and have been for many years (their biggest crime being that they were street criminals and did not rob their victims "with a fountain pen"), in more enlightened societies even prisoners get to vote while still in prison. Millions of other poor people were kept from voting during this election many by the new electoral suppression efforts. This process is reminiscent of the Deep South after reconstruction, South Africa during Apartheid, or Israel today (and not coincidentally U.S. police are training in large numbers in Israel in social control measures as the U.S. ruling class prepares for the violent suppression of inevitable uprisings). The author points out that turn-out fell from 130 million in 2008 and 127 million in 2102 to 112.5 million. Much of this fall in turn-out is due to the more vigorous voter suppression efforts in place, and some proportion of it is due to Hillary Clinton's "old Pol" persona and the fact that she represents the process that has disemboweled and hollowed-out the U.S. over the last 40 years. These are numbers that dwarf the margin of victory for Donald Trump.

The massive influx of money, necessary to sell candidates by the same methods used to sell cars or toothpaste, already huge before the recent Supreme Court decisions, became even larger and largely secret after those decisions. The need for large amounts of money to run for any office limits the ability to run to those with donor friends and supporters, and the donors always have their own agendas. Finally we
get to the ruling class's last fall back position, who counts the votes. In Germany, Britain, Israel, India, Switzerland, and Canada all ballots are hand-counted with representatives of the various parties present to keep it as honest as possible. In the U.S., in 49 states, all the ballots are counted using computerized tabulating machines, that can easily have 3 or 4 lines of computer code inserted (among hundreds of thousands of lines) to skew the results in the direction desired by some shadowy figures. The computer codes that runs this equipment is "proprietary" which means secret, even the state and local voting organizations do not have access to how the votes are recorded or counted. Three corporations, originally named Diebold, ES&S, and Sequoia (there have been numerous name changes over the years, but the corporate structures remain) provide the great bulk of the computer voting equipment, all three are controlled by far-right operatives (the two Urosevich brothers, extreme right-to-life activists and completely opposed to popular democracy, each bought one of these companies three or four years ago). It is worth pointing out that here are reports that George Soros has bought some other computer voting equipment company. Of course, right-wing Republicans always bring up George Soros, in response to comments about the numerous billionaires who support their pet reactionary causes. Soros is a vicious globalist, a proponent of open borders, and made his billions in predatory currency trading; he is clearly an oligarch who aligns with the Democratic wing of the duopoly.

Finally, the actual issues that drove this unusual right-wing populist victory. In the seven decades since WW 2 the U.S. ruling class to a significant degree ran the
world's affairs. At first the U.S. was so powerful and prosperous that the costs of this did not have much effect on the lives of the common people; this is particularly true for the period from 1945 - 1975 a time often referred to as "the Golden Age of Capitalism". But the costs of running the U.S. Empire mounted continuously, and technological developments (i.e., automation, and the massive move by U.S. Capitalists to invest and produce their products in low-wage, low-regulation places) and socioeconomic changes (i.e., women entering the workforce in large numbers and massive immigration) changes undermined the position of the U.S. working class. Now the U.S. is a low-wage and low-social benefit society at the bottom of rankings for the "developed" countries in nearly all social indicators.

The former "workshop of the world" in the northeast quadrant of the U.S. lies in ruins for all the world to see (with its poorer inhabitants living in shattered communities without much in the way of 21st Century civilized benefits), and East Asia is now the locus of that "workshop of the world". Hillary Clinton represented the callous elites who have benefitted from this process, while betraying the working people and killing off the old New Deal Coalition and social benefits. Many American working people of all groups now live in places that have "Third World" conditions for life expectancy, infant mortality, maternal mortality, health care and educational access, etc. Working people, particularly the White Working Class, have been moving away from the Democrats for decades (Reagan Republicans and Nixon "urbanethnic" supporters and all). Bernie Sanders represented a tepid returnto the New Deal ideals (actually he admitted he merely wanted to returnto the Eisenhower era consensus), but using a variety of stratagems theestablishment Democrats torpedoed him. This left Donald Trump, as a right-wing populist, and the only major party who addressed the legitimate concerns of the White Working Class, albeit in a negative reactionary manner (though it is worth pointing out that surveys found that the median family income of Trump supporters was $72,000 per year, well above the national median of about $54,000 per year).

There was no real positive choice in this election. Trump espouses less war-like sentiments than Clinton did, but promises to lavish huge sums on the military and to commit 30,000 U.S. troops to Syria. All the while he, and the tea-party types in the Congress, will cut the already scandalously low taxes for the rich, end the both the modest social benefits that still remain that support many lower-income people, and
gut the meager environmental regulations that, here in the U.S., to some degree protect the planet, our one and only home.

Well, these angry white voters are going to get left confused once Donald Trump continues business as usual.

Oh, don't get me wrong. He'll throw the angry white people a bone by appointing right-wing extremists to the Supreme Court. But otherwise, it'll be more stuff that benefits the rich.

Not that Hillary Clinton would've been much better.

I quote: 'a devastating and unexpected defeat for progressive hopes, values and agendas.' is this a joke? or do you really mean this?

YOU.HAVE.FAILED.